Art 2200 Final Project: Hell and a Handbag

Hell and a Handbag

                       For my final project, I researched and took inspiration from the work of the artist Sarah Sze. Sze is known for her amazingly complex and detailed sculptures which she makes with everyday objects. She spends a great deal of time assembling her intricate works, and typically incorporates architectural themes. One can look at her work for a long time while visually discovering the many components, which are each placed in a seemingly very deliberate fashion, in the manner of a complex machine.

            Inspired by Sze’s work, I made a sculpture from everyday objects for my final project. There are many components which can be visually explored, similarly to Sze’s work. However, my sculpture differs in that it was made from mundane pieces of trash and appliances that I gathered from an old farm dump, which have all been aged for a minimum of 20 years outside. Sze typically uses new materials, such as matches, paper, string, and food to construct her work. Additionally, I made a small fountain of dripping water in my project, which incorporates movement and further addresses the subject of time. Many of Sze’s sculptures appear to be stationary.

            The components of this sculpture include a rusted metal chair, old appliances such as a television, slow cooker, and Singer sewing machine, and garbage, such as glass bottles, soda cans, a can of dried red barn paint, a water heating element, a plastic pecan pie mix bag (“just add fresh pecans!”), a muffler, and a plastic clothes label indicating the size “medium”. There is also a leather or imitation leather handbag. These objects were stacked on top of each other to secure the muffler upright in the chair, so that an ash tree switch could be held up by being inserted into the compacted dirt and rust inside of the muffler. Cable ties were used to hold cans, a funnel, and a drain spout onto the branch to create a dripping fountain.

These objects interest me because of the different ways in which they have aged, such as in the way that the technology has become outdated or that the plastic has remained almost like new. Time has aged the objects, and grown plants over them, but it has not changed the problematic nature of the garbage having once been dumped rather than disposed of properly. This sculpture addresses the enduring nature of human-generated garbage by bringing it out of the places in which it has been hidden and into view. The dripping water is incorporated for its time-metering effect. 

Final Project Work in Progress

I finally, finally, came up with an idea for my final project sculpture. The artist I researched, Sarah Sze, is known for making sculptures out of everyday objects. They're so complex that one can look at them for a long time as the eye discovers new components. We are not supposed to copy our artist's work, however. I planned to make a complicated sculpture too, but it needed to be something different.

At last I thought of going to the old farm dump and taking everyday objects from there! My new objects are a minimum of 20 years old, weathered, and somewhere between garbage, very inappropriately dumped in the woods decades ago, and treasure. I can't believe some of the stuff I found, too! Usually the dump is inaccessible under its veil of poison ivy. Who knew there was an old Singer sewing machine in there!

The running water also adds movement to the sculpture, and an element that I didn't encounter in Sze's work. I was originally going to use some lab equipment for that, but I was not able to set up an environment sturdy enough to hold up expensive glass instruments. An old can will have to do.

Here are some work in progress shots. I think the sculpture might look more like art if it were inside of a building.

Assignment 6: Ephemeral Installation

In preparation for this assignment, we watched the film River and Tides, which is about the work of the incredibly eloquent artist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy creates art by going into nature and moving the materials he finds there into studies natural shapes and forms. His elegant pieces require time and patience to complete, but may last only moments before falling apart.

            I chose a sunny place along an old fencerow in the woods on campus, near the south-west corner of the soccer field, to construct my installation.  The fencerow still has wire field fence and piled stones, and there is a small ravine running to the creek. The spring birds were calling, the weather was fair, garter snakes were coming out of hibernation on the hillside, and little spring beauty flowers were beginning to bloom. Our campus is beautiful, and I love that while there is a triumph of nature where the woods have grown back, there is still evidence of the farms and people’s lives that used to be there. The old fences were built by people once, and every stone is in its place because a person picked it up and moved it there. Moving rocks is an enduring way in which people can reach across great lengths of time. Goldsworthy discussed this in his film. There is a kind of human connection in stones.

            Goldsworthy often makes pieces in which he arranges objects so that their natural differences in color create a perfect circle. I could find very little color in the woods so early in spring, but after looking around for a few minutes I noticed that some of the rocks had bright green moss growing on their surfaces. When I lifted them out of the ground, I found that the moss ended abruptly where the stone had not been exposed to light, creating a contrast in color. I piled stones and arranged them so that the areas of moss formed a circle of green surrounded by the bare surfaces, and I found that it was much more difficult than I had realized. It took me several hours to gather the stones and the circle required trial and error to construct, but I found this process to be very pleasant. There was a meditative calm in spending some time working with my hands, and I enjoyed being alone with my thoughts on such a nice day. It was therapeutic to be free to concentrate on that task.

            My finished piece is a green circle on a background of gray made by arranging stones from the old fencerow, with a smaller circle of red beside it, which was made with some fungus I had found. I was not able to achieve a very strong contrast in the moss circle, and so I think that the effect is subtle and it blends into the environment.

            Demise is always a part of an ephemeral piece. My fungus circle will not last long, but if the stones are not disturbed they may be there long after I am gone. The pattern of moss will not last, however, because now that the stones have been moved their conditions have changed, and moss will die is some places and begin to grow in others. I think that there is a beauty in the aging of ephemeral art, and the eventual loss of the circle is a part of the piece.